HOW TO GET HOME

One of the themes of LOST was the character's desire to "get home."

There are many expressions about home.

Home is where you live.
Home is where you sleep.
Home is the shelter where you keep your possessions.
Home is where the heart is.

But in broader context, home is connected with the promised land in many cultures.

This supposes that our life on earth is a transitory event. That on the path of life, our mortality is nothing more than a way station to the next form of existence.

Many religions have concepts of heaven or paradise for "good" people after they die on Earth. It is a comforting notion on what happens after we pass on, and for those we leave behind.

Many ancient cultures believed that man was created from the stars, and upon death returns to the stars.

But there is no clear explanation for how this transition happens.

There are views of the brimstone of hell for sinners, and near-death experiences where people began walking to the "bright light," but since no one has been revived from the after life, we really don't know what happens next. It is a matter of faith over science.

So it is open to interpretation and imagination of how one travels back to the stars, or paradise.

The concept of the soul is a means of explanation. It is the spiritual vessel that can transcend time and space; to recreate your body in a different dimension to live on.

This journey may be as important as the destination. That is another strong theme in the series. The journey of the main characters to get to the sideways church.

The whole LOST saga could be placed in the after life journey of the characters. They needed to suffer physical and mental pain in order to figure out what was truly important. It was not a moral redemption but a personal manifestation of releasing one's own emotional demons in order to see the world around them in a new light. They need to get beyond the material aspects of life because they are immaterial in the after life. They need to get deep personal bonds with other souls in order to share the burden of getting to the doors of paradise.

If this is the true purpose of LOST, then the sideways season makes a little more sense.